Hundreds die in Dominican Republic floods

The number of people killed in flooding in the Dominican Republic and Haiti has risen to at least 363 with scores of bodies being dumped in mass graves.

Desperate families searched through the night in the debris of wrecked houses after floods and mudslides swept away whole villages.

More than 100 bodies have been dumped in a mass grave in Jimani, a town of about 10,000 on the Haitian border largely populated by Haitian migrants.

Emergency workers in surgical masks and white gloves watched as trucks dumped scored of corpses into a 15ft-long ditch. No relatives were present for the burials.

Heavy rains caused the Solie River in Jimani to burst its banks, sweeping away wooden shacks in three neighbourhoods. Many families were asleep when a torrent of mud swept through the town before daybreak on Monday.

The Dominican government had issued an alert on Sunday warning people that rivers may swell with the rains, but Jimani - more than 100 miles west of the capital, Santo Domingo - has only limited access to radio broadcasts.

Soldiers from the 3,600-strong multinational force stationed in Haiti since President Aristide was forced from power earlier this year are helping with the rescue effort.

The floods, which were some of the deadliest in a decade have made many roads in both the Dominican Republic and Haiti impassable.

In 1994, a tropical storm caused mudslides that buried at least 829 Haitians. Nearly 30 people died last September during floods caused by heavy rain in St Marc, about 45 miles northwest of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.